“ Iheard,” says Molly Coogan, “that the Sun Yat-sen”—one of the Chinese superfrigates that accompanies the Chinese container ships on the polar route—“sailed into Cork Harbor last week with five hundred marines on deck. A bit of a show of force, like.”
“Sure you’re missing a zero, there, Moll,” says Fern O’Brien, who leans over from the next table. “My Jude’s Bill was on loading duty at Ringaskiddy that day so he was, and he swears there wasn’t a man under five t’ousandtrooping the color under the Chinese flag.”
I can imagine Ed, my long-dead partner, making hang-dog eyes at the authenticity of this so-called news but there’s more to come as talk switches to a sister-in-law of Pat Joe’s cousin in County Offaly, who knows a “Man in the Know” at Stability Research in the Dublin Pale who reckons the Swedes have genomed a rustproof, selffertile strain of wheat. “I’m only passing on what I’ve been told,” says Pat Joe, “but there’s talk of Stability planting it all over Ireland next spring. If people have full bellies, the Jackdawing and rioting’ll stop.”
“White bread,” sighs Sнnead Fitzgerald. “Imagine that.”
“I’d not want to go pissing on your snowman now, Pat Joe,” says Seamus Coogan, “but was that the same Man in the Know who said the Germans had a pill that cured Ratflu, or that the States was reunited again, and the president was sending airdrops of blankets, medicine, and peanut butter to all the NATO countries? Or was it that friend of a friend who met an Asylumite outside Youghal who swore on his mother’s life that he’d found a Technotopia where they still have twenty-four-hour electricity, hot showers, pineapples, and dark chocolate mousse, in Bermuda or Iceland or the Azores?”
I think about Martin’s remarks on imaginary lifeboats.
“I’m only passing on what I’ve been told,” sniffs Pat Joe.
“Whatever the future has in store,” says Betty Power, “we’re all in the hollow of God’s hand, so we are.”
“That’s certainly how Muriel Boyce sees it,” says Seamus Coogan.
“Martin’s doing his best,” says Betty Power, crisply, “but it’s clear that only the Church can take care of the devilry falling over the world.”
“Why will a loving God only help us if we vote for him?” asks Molly.
“You have to ask,” blinks Betty Power. “That’s how prayer works.”
“But Molly’s saying,” says Pat Joe, “why can’t He just answer our prayers directly? Why does he need us to vote for him?”
“To put the Church back where it belongs,” says Betty Power. “Guiding our country.”
The conversation heats up but I may as well be listening to children arguing about the acts and motives of Santa Claus. I’ve seen what happens after death, the Dusk and the Dunes, and it was as real to me as the chipped mug of tea in my hand. Perhaps the souls I saw were bound for an afterlife beyond the Last Sea, but if so, it’s not the afterlife described by any priest or imam. There is no God but the one we dream up, I could assure my fellow parishioners: Humanity is on its own and always was …
… but my truth sounds no crazier than their faith, no saner either; and who has the right to kill Santa? Specially a Santa who promises to reunite the Coogans with their dead son, Pat Joe with his dead brother, me with Aoife, Jacko, Mum, and Dad; and even put the Endarkenment into reverse, and bring back central heating, online ordering, Ryanair, and chocolate. Our hunger for our loved ones and our lost world is as sharp as grief; it howls to be fed. If only that same hunger didn’t make us so meekly vulnerable to men like Father Brady.
“Fallen pregnant?” Betty Power covers her mouth. “Never!” We’re back to Sheep’s Head gossip. I’d like to ask who’s pregnant, but if I do so at this point they’ll all wonder if I’m going deaf or turning senile.
“That’s the problem.” Sinйad Fitzgerald leans in. “Three lads went off with young Miss Hegarty after the harvest festival, they were all off their faces”—she mimes smoking a joint—“so until the baby’s features are clear enough to play Spot the Daddy, Damien Hegarty doesn’t know who to point the shotgun at. A proper mess it is.”
The Hegartys keep goats lower down the peninsula, between Ahakista and Durrus. “Shocking,” says Betty Power, “and Niamh Hegarty not a day over sixteen, too, am I right? No mother in the house to lay down the rules, that’s what this is about. They just think anything goes. Which is exactly why Father Brady’s—”
“Hear that,” says Pat Joe, holding up a finger and listening …
… cups are poised in midlift; sentences dangle; babies are shushed; nearly two hundred West Corkonians fall silent, all at once; and then let out a collective sigh of relief. It’s the Convoy: two armored jeeps, ahead of and behind the diesel tanker and the box truck. Inside the Cordon we still have tractors and harvesters, and Stability vehicles still drive on the old N71 to Bantry to service the garrisons and the depots, but these four shiny state-of-the-art vehicles rumbling up Church Lane are the only regular visitors to Kilcrannog. For anyone over Rafiq’s age, say, the sound evokes the world we knew. Back then, traffic was a “noise,” not a “sound,” but it’s different now. If you close your eyes as the Convoy arrives you can imagine it’s 2030, say, back when you had your own car and Cork was a ninety-minute drive away, and my body didn’t ache all the time, and climate change was only a problem for people who lived in flood-prone areas. Only I don’t close my eyes these days, because it hurts too much when I open them. We all go outside to watch the show. I take my pram. It’s not that I don’t trust the villagers not to steal from an old lady with two kids to raise, but you shouldn’t tempt hungry people.
THE HEAD JEEP pulls up past the diesel store. Four young Irish Stability troops jump out, enjoying the impact their uniforms, guns, and swagger makes on the yokels; it’s not by chance that Kilcrannog’s single girls wear their dwindling supplies of makeup and best clothes on Convoy Days. Corinna Kennedy from Rossmore Farm married a Convoyman and now she’s living in the Bandon garrison with five hours of electricity a day. The head Irish guard speaks rapid-fire “Mandlish” into his transband to confirm their current position to the Main Convoy. “Each of them helmets’d cost more than my house,” Pat Joe tells me, not for the first time, “if you had the contacts to turn it into hard yuan.”
Three Chinese troops jump down from the rear jeep, in the uniforms of the Pearl Occident Company, or POC. They are taller than their Irish counterparts, their teeth are better, and their guns are more, as teenage Aoife would’ve said, badass. The Irish troops will chat a little, but the Chinese troops are under orders not to fraternize with the locals. Bantry is the western, wilder end of the Lease Lands, and the diesel they’re delivering is more precious than gold. One of the Irishmen spots Kevin Murray’s lit pipe too close to the tanker and barks, “Sir, we need you to put that pipe out right now!” Mortified, Kevin shuffles back into the Big Hall. Convoymen never need to threaten. The Convoys are our umbilical cord to the Ringaskiddy depot and its special items, no longer manufactured in Ireland, or anywhere in Europe, for all we know.
The two week in, week out Convoymen are Noel Moriarty, the tankerman, and Seamus Li, the chief merchant. Noel Moriarty, a busy-eyed, quick-witted, pale, and balding man in his midthirties, shakes hands and chats with Martin while the driver fits nozzle to intake. Martin asks Noel if he has any information about Hinkley Point. Noel says his POC boss told him the Chinese are monitoring the site from low-altitude satellites, but the whole complex appears to have been deserted. This news flies round the onlooking crowd in less than a minute, but as ever it’s difficult to draw reliable conclusions from such scant facts. Noel Moriarty and Martin sign each other’s clipboards, then the tankerman pulls the red handle that starts the flow of diesel into the Co-op tank. We try to catch a whiff of the stuff, and suffer a fresh round of pangs for the Petrol Age.